Hi! I'm Patricia. Unless the site gets hacked, all entries are written by me. Which is said neither with a whole lot of pride nor much embarrassment. Like many a personal blog, the entries revolve around me. And let's face it, if you can't be vain on your own blog then where can you be vain? All to say, if you're looking for the latest on world news, celebrity gossip, or the next election, this probably isn't where you wanted to be. But thanks for stopping by! A little more about me...

Monday, April 24, 2017

Shutterfly has this promotion via their app that allows one to order 4x4 or 4x6 cards for free, not including shipping. As I unpack and prepare the spare bedroom* for use as an office/craft space, the urge to send snail mail has struck me again. So, the offer of “free” photos seemed serendipitous. I ordered a bunch and I’m here to tell you that when they say unlimited, they mean it. Well, unlimited in the sense that you can order many prints (but only 9 of each at a time). Still, I’m not about to quibble. As the photos have been arriving I’ve been cataloging them. Once I came up with a storage solution (thankfully a couple hundred photos don’t actually take up much space) I realized that maybe I went a little too overboard. With the number of photos I’d ordered, I’d have to write to a good number of people a week to make a dent in the cards. Which isn’t much of a problem, really. It just comes down to focus but having just learned that Bunheads is on Freeform.com yesterday, focusing on snail mail might be hard! Then again, Bunheads was a one season wonder so it’s not as if it’s gonna hold my attention for too too long. So there goes that excuse.

On Saturday, during a discussion of an upcoming fundraiser I had the brilliant idea that maybe I could donate a little time and a lot of photos to the event. “I have,” I said, “a ton of photos that I could turn into greeting cards. Maybe we could sell them at the picnic?”

“Why don’t we auction off one of your photographs?” was the response.

That took me by surprise; after a slight hesitation, I shook my head and said, “No, I think the cards are better.” Ah, insecurity rears it’s ugly head. I don’t know why I am willing to risk none of the cards being bought but am not willing to have a bigger photograph going unclaimed. Maybe it’s just logistics. I’ve done cards before, they’re simply enough and if they don’t sell, I’ll just use them myself. But a bigger photo, I’d want to make sure it prints on good paper, I’d want to mat it well, and get a decent frame. All in a week, when I get home tired and in the mood to just not think or do much. It all seemed like too much energy. Plus, again, there’s the absolute lack of interest in having people not be interested in my artistic eye. I’ve thought about maybe trying to sell stuff online. Every little bit of income coming in now would help. So, if I want to pursue that, I suppose I need to get some tougher skin around the photography skills and get on with enduring some potential rejection.

For now though, I’m gonna just glue some photos to blank cards and scratch the itch to create something in that minimal way.